19 posts tagged with "Government"

Yes. Recap can transform meeting recordings into searchable transcripts and AI-powered summaries. Upload a recording or connect Zoom, Google Meet, or your video platform, and Recap automatically generates a timestamped transcript with speaker identification, a concise summary, key topics, and action items you can search across your entire meeting library.

State government video must meet Section 508 accessibility standards when the agency is a federal agency, a state agency subject to state-level Section 508 adoption, or any entity developing ICT with federal funding. In practice, that means prerecorded video needs synchronized captions, live events need real-time captions where feasible, and meaningful visual content needs audio description, all aligned with WCAG 2.1 Level AA. These obligations apply on their own timeline and are not replaced by ADA Title II deadline extensions.

Public meeting video is only half the record. Residents also need the agenda they read before the meeting, the board packet with staff reports, and the official minutes that follow. Until now, those documents usually lived on a separate page on your website while the recording sat in Granicus, YouTube, or a Recap embed. Residents bounced between tabs. Clerks re-uploaded the same PDFs in multiple places.

Recap Innovations now supports meeting documents and draft minutes directly on each meeting recording. Attach an agenda, packet, published minutes, or highlights document, or generate a structured draft minutes document from the transcript. Everything appears alongside the searchable transcript and captions in your Recap embed and showcase collections.

California Senate Bill 707 is the most significant update to the state's open meeting law in decades. Signed by Governor Newsom on October 3, 2025, SB 707 amends the Ralph M. Brown Act to require public agencies across California to offer hybrid meetings with two-way remote participation, activate real-time captioning on video platforms, translate meeting agendas into languages spoken by significant portions of the local population, and take concrete steps to encourage participation from underrepresented communities. The law took effect on January 1, 2026, with enhanced requirements for larger agencies kicking in on July 1, 2026.

Government agencies and educational institutions increasingly issue RFPs for real-time closed captioning services. These requests appears in solicitations from school boards, city councils, state agencies, and colleges that need captions during live meetings, not just on recorded video afterward.

This guide explains what a real-time closed captioning service is, what procurement teams typically require, and how to evaluate vendors for school board meetings, city council sessions, public hearings, planning commission meetings, and commencement ceremonies.

City clerks are responsible for the official record of public meetings, but producing detailed minutes is one of the most time-consuming parts of the job. AI-powered transcription can automate the bulk of this work while simultaneously making meetings accessible and searchable for residents.

This guide covers what city clerks need to know about adopting automated meeting transcription: how it works, what accuracy to expect, how it fits into existing workflows, and how to procure it.

A growing number of cities and towns are investing in searchable meeting transcripts as a way to increase civic engagement, reduce staff workload, and meet ADA Title II accessibility requirements. The trend is accelerating in 2026 as residents demand easier access to local government proceedings.

When public meetings are recorded and posted online, cities check the transparency box. But transparency is not the same as accessibility. A 4-hour video recording that no one watches is technically public but practically invisible. Searchable meeting transcripts change the equation entirely.

On April 20, 2026, the Department of Justice published an interim final rule extending the compliance dates for web content and mobile application accessibility under ADA Title II. The WCAG 2.1 Level AA requirements adopted in April 2024 are unchanged; only the enforcement calendar has moved.

Recap Innovations, the leading turn-key vendor for video accessibility services, is pleased to announce that we have been awarded a contract by the Wisconsin Technical Colleges Purchasing Consortium (WTCPC) to provide media captioning, transcription, and audio description services. We were awarded all six bid packages under RFB 26-006AM, making Recap Innovations a comprehensive accessibility vendor for the consortium's member institutions and their cooperative purchasing partners.

Starting August 17, 2026, the FCC requires manufacturers of covered apparatus and multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) to make closed captioning display settings "readily accessible" to individuals who are deaf and hard of hearing. The rule, codified at 47 CFR 79.103(e), defines "readily accessible" through four specific factors and applies to a broad range of devices, from televisions and set-top boxes to smartphones, tablets, and computers.

This guide covers the full scope of the requirement: what the regulation says, who must comply, what display settings must be supported, how the FCC will evaluate compliance, and what organizations that produce or distribute video content should do before the deadline.

Government entities are responsible for making their social media videos accessible under ADA Title II, even when the platform itself does not offer built-in caption support. We have added a new export option to Recap that lets you burn captions directly into the video frames, producing a file with permanently visible (open) captions that works on any platform.

The DOJ's ADA Title II final rule requires state and local government web content, including video, to meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA. But not every video a government entity has ever published must be made accessible by the compliance deadline. The rule defines five specific exceptions, plus additional provisions for fundamental alteration, undue burden, and minimal-impact noncompliance.

This article explains each exception, how it applies to video content, and what obligations remain even when an exception applies.

When a city posts a video to Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, or X, that video is government web content. Under the DOJ's ADA Title II final rule, it must meet the same WCAG 2.1 Level AA accessibility standards as content on the city's own website. The rule does not distinguish between a formal council meeting recording embedded on a .gov site and a 30-second community event clip posted to Instagram Reels.

This article covers what the rule requires for social media video, which posts are exempt and which are not, what accessible social media video looks like in practice, and how the platform-versus-content distinction works.

Your city posts a 90-second video to Facebook announcing a new recycling program. It shows an infographic with collection schedules, a map of service zones, and text overlays with phone numbers and dates. It gets shared 400 times. It has no captions, no transcript, and no audio description. Under the DOJ's ADA Title II rule, that video is a compliance gap, and it is one that cities create dozens of times per month across Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, X, and their own websites.

This article is for the city clerk, communications director, or media team member who already knows their city needs to make social media video accessible, but needs a practical solution they can present to a supervisor or budget director for final approval.

If you are a city clerk, city manager, or IT director at a local government with 50,000 or more residents, the ADA Title II compliance deadline for your web content is April 24, 2026. That includes every council meeting video, commission meeting recording, public hearing, and informational video on your city website or social media channels.

Many cities are discovering that their current streaming or website vendor has been slow to offer accessibility solutions, or that the quoted costs are far higher than expected. This guide is for the local government staff member who needs to get compliant quickly, practically, and affordably.

When procurement officers and IT administrators evaluate video accessibility platforms for colleges, universities, and government agencies, single sign-on (SSO) via SAML 2.0 often appears on the requirements checklist. Institutional identity management is a security imperative: users should authenticate through the organization's identity provider (IdP) rather than managing separate credentials for each application. This guide explains why SAML SSO matters for video accessibility, what to look for in a vendor, and how Recap Innovations supports SAML SSO for higher education and government clients.

State university systems, community college consortia, and state agencies increasingly use statewide or multi-institutional contracts for video captioning and accessibility services. A single master agreement can serve dozens of campuses, streamline procurement, and deliver consistent quality at volume pricing. This guide explains how statewide captioning contracts work, what procurement officers should consider, and how Recap Innovations supports multi-institutional deployments.

State and local governments, including city councils, county boards, and public agencies, face an approaching ADA Title II compliance deadline requiring all web and mobile content, including videos, to meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA accessibility standards. Communities with populations over 50,000 must comply by April 24, 2026, while those under 50,000 have until April 24, 2027. This requirement fundamentally changes how government entities publish meeting videos, public announcements, educational content, and other multimedia materials.

This comprehensive guide explains the video accessibility requirements for state and local governments, the compliance deadlines based on population size, and practical solutions for meeting these mandates through transcription, closed captioning, live captioning, and audio description services.